In an article summarizing what is known about the events of 9/11/12 in Benghazi, Libya, where the US mission and CIA center were attacked and the ambassador and three other Americans killed, Mark Baisley raises not only the obvious questions but some new and awful possibilities. He writes at Townhall:

Ambassador Christopher Stevens had been found dead around 1:00AM by locals who sought to loot the embassy compound. Thinking he may yet be alive, they drove him to a medical center where doctors tried unsuccessfully to revive him from the effects of smoke asphyxiation.

So not necessarily “found dead’. If the doctors are telling the truth that they thought he might be revivable when he reached the hospital, it means that what we are seeing in the pictures is not the gross mishandling of a corpse, which would be bad enough, but the possible savageabuse of a living man, the high representative of the United States of America.

Having been subjected to weeks of YouTube video apologetics and obfuscation, the American electorate naturally has questions for the Commander-In-Chief.

Why was the site securityteam removed from Benghazi one month before the attack, in conflict with expert advice and requests?

Why would the Ambassador to Libya be meeting with the Consul General of Turkey?

Why was there no U.S. military response to an attack on American assets, including the assassination of a United States ambassador?

Why was America treated to such a hard-sell explanation of a YouTube video?

Why is the filmmaker in jail?

Why did the State Department produce a television ad about the YouTube video that was broadcast in Pakistan?

I can surmise three possible explanations, having received mountains of information and speculation …

Theory 1. There actually was reason to believe initially that the attack on the Benghazi consulate was motivated by anger at the YouTube video. CIA Director David Petraeus briefed members of Congress on September 14 that the YouTube video incited mob action against the Benghazi facility. Earlier on September 11, a mob had indeed stormed the U.S. Embassy in nearby Egypt. Americans heard little of that event because the Cairo embassy is built like a fortress and no Americans were hurt. The Washington Times reported that a witness in Benghazi “saw the militants gathering around 20 youths from nearby to chant against the film.” While the Administration has since learned the truth, they have simply been stalling the revelation of more accurate information in the face of an intense re-election campaign.

We discount this theory. It isn’t even worth considering. We know intelligence reached Washington very soon after the onslaught began that it was an attack by a terrorist organization. And there are witness reports that there had been no protest demonstration.

Theory 2. Ambassador Stevens was set up for assassination. In this scenario, the Benghazi consulate is actually a front for the CIA annex which is gathering weapons left over from the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi. Those weapons are being shipped to Turkey in order to supply Syrian rebels in their quest to effect the same fate for President Bashar al-Assad. Fox News has reported on the initial shipment to the port town of Iskenderun, Turkey, a scant 25 miles from the Syrian border.

The theory here is that the Turkish General Consul lured Stevens to Benghazi for a late-day meeting where they knew of the relatively small security force in place to protect him. The timing of September 11 was important for using the YouTube video as a ready-made cover story.

This is a new twist to the story. That Turkish consul, whom we had thought a mere walk-on in the drama, a visitor calling on normal diplomatic business, having a quiet meeting with Ambassador Stevens who then politely walked him out to the street to see him off, actually played a central part in the plot? If so, the meeting was what the Ambassador had gone to Benghazi for on that critical day, and the Turk got him there in order to have him killed.

The theory raises new questions. Why would the Turks want Ambassador Stevens killed? The Turks want to aid the Syrian rebels. The Turks would surely want arms to reach the rebels. If Ambassador Stevens was organizing shipments of arms to Turkey to be passed on to the rebels, was he not a valuable asset to the Turks?

But wait. It gets worse.

The complicity of the Obama Administration is reflected in the lack of a military response and the hard campaigning of the YouTube video to the American people.

The Obama administration was actually complicit in the luring of their own Ambassador – one, let’s remember, who shared Obama’s sentimental attachment to Islam and the Arab world – to his atrocious death?

We have blamed Obama’s policies. We have blamed his refusal to see the evil in Islam, or to acknowledge that Islam is waging jihad against America; but we had not thought that Obama and his gang actually wanted Ambassador Stevens murdered. Why would they? But the facts stare us in the face: he was denied adequate protection. When he asked for more they gave him less.The truth is being covered up. So what is it they feel so desperately needs to be covered up?

The third theory has Obama less guilty but far more helplessly incompetent and weak:

Theory 3. The Obama Administration and the Clinton State Department are incompetent actors who prefer dreams of a utopian world over the harsh reality of extremists who take joy in killing. They assume the best about our enemies and the worst about patriotic Americans. When realizing that our facilities and people were under attack, the community organizer found himself frighteningly in the position of Commander In Chief. Barack Obama brags about the killing of Osama Bin Laden on the campaign trail. But we have all heard the rumors that Leon Panetta and Hillary Clinton presented the President with the OBL mission only after it was well underway. They reportedly excluded White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett who is rumored to have stood in the way of previous opportunities to get Bin Laden.

An Alinskyite community organizer suddenly has to give orders as Commander In Chief of the armed might of the USA. How could he be capable of it? But he would not have needed to find himself in such a crisis if his policies, formulated at leisure over four years and shaped by a lifetime of leftist ideology, hadn’t led to the critical moment. He is as guilty as he would be if his active connivance at the massacre, an actual plot involving him and the Turkish consul, were to be uncovered.